Two from Palladium.
Usually it's drought. A couple times it was a drought by-product, dust. More after the jump.*
And why, wary yet inquisitive reader may be wondering, are we going on about this stuff?
Because you don't want to be taken by surprise. Live one's life, take care of one's business, be aware of what's possible, roll with the changes.
From Palladium Magazine's (we are fans) The Palladium Letter, March 8:
Why Civilizations Collapse
We have to evaluate the perceptions that mint facts and theory, not merely peruse the body of theories handed down to us.
This article by Samo Burja from the philosophical journal The Side View was republished on Palladium Magazine on March 8, 2024.
Why do civilizations collapse? This question bears not only on safeguarding our society’s future but also makes sense of our present. The answer relies on some of the same technē that humanity needed to build civilization in the first place: we have to evaluate the perceptions that mint facts and theory, not merely peruse the body of theories handed down to us.
Institutional failure comes as a surprise because organizations try to hide their shortcomings. They lean on other, more functional organizations in order to keep up appearances. During civilizational collapse, no organization can properly hide its own inadequacy, since the whole interdependent ecosystem of institutions is caving in on itself. States, religions, material technologies, and ways of life that once seemed self-sustaining turn out to have been dependent on the invisible subsidy of just a few key institutions. The environment of societal collapse reveals much of the otherwise obscured inner workings of crucial social technologies. After all, to analyze something is to break it apart!
Despite being an excellent epistemic opportunity, civilizational collapse seldom inspires introspection among thinkers living through it. Mayan or Roman thinkers don’t seem to have reflected on their ongoing collapse. As institutions turn to cannibalizing each other, there is little patronage or emotional energy going towards accurately describing the wider process. The notable exception that proves the rule of civilizational delusion is the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China. It is an encouraging example, since it shows a societal failure arrested and reversed by an intellectual golden age called the Hundred Schools of Thought. Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism could only come into being with this kind of epistemic opportunity.
In the West today, we operate under the influence of our own key philosophy, which we can call scientism: the tendency to rely on scientific claims to describe the functioning of society, even when there is no empirical reason to assume that they apply. We act as if we are already living in a scientifically-planned society, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about. This is very far from the truth. We are certainly living in socially-engineered societies, but they are not scientifically planned in any straightforward way. Our organs of economic management do not secretly know how the economy really works. Our systems of political regulation are operating on the fumes of their institutional inheritance from two or three generations ago—the last spurt of institutional growth in Western societies happened roughly during the 1970s. At this time in the United States, new federal bodies such as the Department of Energy and Education were created and organizations such as NASA reached their modern form. Concurrently, the United Kingdom dispensed with organized labor as a political force in favor of an expanded administrative apparatus, and France saw the resignation of Charles de Gaulle, the architect of the Fifth Republic; neither country’s political economy has evolved much since.
Civilizational collapse always looms on the horizon. Though we usually think of collapse as a slow process, it can in fact happen very quickly, as was the case with the Late Bronze Age collapse. The old dictum “gradually, then suddenly” is cliché, but accurate. To ascertain whether or not we are headed for collapse, we must first analyze the functionality of our own society and pinpoint where things go wrong.
Mechanisms of Collapse
Our society is dominated by large bureaucracies. These bureaucracies break down the processing of physical goods and information into discrete tasks, such as how a factory worker puts doors on a car, or a stock trader buys futures contracts. These tasks are shorn of their context and executed in a systematized environment whose constraints are quite narrow: put the car door in, increase the portfolio value. Our society is thoroughly compartmentalized. This compartmentalization isn’t driven by the division of labor, but rather by the need to make use of misaligned talent without empowering it. By radically limiting employees’ scope of action, you make office politics more predictable. By fragmenting available knowledge, you can leverage information asymmetries to the intellectual or material advantage of the center. Some of this is necessary for scaling organizations beyond what socially connected networks can manage—but move too far towards compartmentalization, and it becomes impossible to accomplish the original mission of the organization.Such large bureaucratic systems do not emerge organically; they require design and implementation. Empirically, we can know this simply by examining the intent of the original founders of these systems. If you want to know, say, why the FBI exists, you can find the answer in the documents of its founder, J. Edgar Hoover. You could do the same for the IRS, or for Amazon, or for any other number of institutions.
It is very difficult, though, to apply this analysis to the construction of society. No matter how large or how small, institutions always coexist in a symbiotic relationship with other institutions. There is no Amazon without the United States government, no U.S. government without—at least—some parts of the U.S. economy. Each of these institutions depends on the others in an intricate mesh. Society is not a single institution, after all, but an ecosystem of interdependent institutions.
In addition to this complexity, non-functional institutions are the rule. Our institutions today rarely function in accordance with their stated purpose. Individuals within a given society are often very bad at judging institutional functionality. Some people spend their entire lives ruthlessly profiting from the misery of others, or greatly contributing to the prosperity of others, without even knowing that they are doing so. People who try to effect change are most often frustrated. Countless people spend their lives wrestling with a societal problem, slaving over papers for publication in academia or the nonprofit world. They act as if there is some sort of metaphorical wall which they throw their papers over, with some responsible person on the other side taking the output of their disinterested scientific study and translating it into policy, medical practice, or industrial production.
More often than not, there is nobody on the other side of that wall. Since society is so deeply compartmentalized, it rarely functions as a whole with a single purpose. Note that dysfunctionality is not a normative distinction; it often boils down to the simple reality of whether or not anyone ever follows up on key actions within the institution. It is also a question of whether or not there is a multiplier—be it individual, bureaucratic, oligarchic—behind that metaphorical wall.
Institutions often become non-functional due to the loss of key knowledge at critical junctures. Take, for example, the recent failure of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to reproduce a niche classified material known as FOGBANK that is necessary for manufacturing nuclear weapons. It took the NNSA ten years and millions of dollars to re-engineer a material that their staff in the 1980s knew how to make. That knowledge never should have been lost in the first place, but in a dysfunctional society, such loss of knowledge becomes the rule. Attempts at reverse engineering do not always succeed, if they are even made.
Civilizational collapse, then, looks like this dynamic at the scale of an entire civilization: a low-grade but constant loss of capabilities and knowledge throughout the most critical parts of our institutions, that eventually degrades our ability to perpetuate society. There might be a sudden point where the superstructure gives way dramatically, such as occurred during the Bronze Age Collapse, or there might be slow accommodation to this convergence to zero, as with the Byzantine Empire.....
....MUCH MORE
If interested, see also: "Let's Face It, When You Reap The Rewards Of Money And Power, You Want To Keep The Money And Power Flowing".
Drought and civilization:
- Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought
- "Lessons From The Last Time Civilization Collapsed"
- Climate Change and Civilization: "Crisis of the 23rd Century"
- The Correlation of Rainfall And Assassination In Ancient Rome (plus the Moche people go bust)
- "How A Eurasian Steppe Empire Coped With Drought"
An Empire Brought Down By Dust
How Late Zhou China Reverse-Engineered a Civilization
These folks were pretty sharp. From recognizing the problem to working out and implementing a solution, wow, just wow.
From Palladium Magazine, July 10, 2020:
When archaeologists discover a sophisticated artifact like the Greek Antikythera mechanism, we conclude that some ancient societies may have been more advanced than previously believed. When we think of advanced civilizations, the image is usually one of advanced technology. Our civilization is advanced because we have rockets and nuclear power. Technology is the systematic application of knowledge, achieving goals that would otherwise be impossible. But not all technologies are material. The ability to organize human relationships, actions, and groups in organized and effective ways is itself a specialized form of knowledge called social technology.
Like material technologies, people can develop social technologies to facilitate the flourishing of society and its people. One might naturally wonder whether great social technology has ever been lost. Just as material technologies like the Antikythera mechanism can be forgotten or destroyed, are some social technologies lost to history?
Ancient China may be one such case—specifically the Shang and Early Zhou dynasties, from roughly 1600 BC to 800 BC. That era met its end as relevant knowledge on how to govern the country was corrupted and lost during the Later Zhou dynasty. With the knowledge fragmented and missing, societal decay ensued. The Warring States Period, which extended from the 5th century to the 3rd century BC, was a chaotic era which resulted from the disrepair and malfunction of this social technology. This spurred the era’s leading thinkers to recognize what was happening, albeit quite late in the process, when it was too late in many ways.
However, that these thinkers recognized what was happening at all is important and noteworthy. The blatant decline of the late Roman Empire did not lead its great thinkers to do the same. The insights and debates of the Later Zhou dynasty about the social technologies behind civilization are worth studying to apply to our own era
What to Do When Civilization Is Breaking Down
The major figures of China’s intellectual renewal came to define the famous Hundred Schools of Thought. China was unusually sophisticated when compared to the other great powers of the era. Archaeological evidence from the period documents impressive bronze works, superior to anything fashioned in the Middle East. The Zhou inherited the use of beautiful, ornamented bronze vessels called ding from earlier dynasties, using them both in sacred rituals and to symbolize temporal wealth and power. The Early Zhou dynasty spent as much bronze on these vessels as they did on their all-important bronze weaponry. This confounds modern assumptions that ancient societies did not have the material surplus to invest in “non-essentials,” often given as a reason why they appeared to remain in stasis, with little development. In fact, this period in history saw important thinkers even argue against unproductive use of wealth, a stance which would be meaningless unless that kind of investment was normal and prominent.The assumption that these vessels represent mere luxury is unfounded. Western cathedrals are, on their face, an unproductive use of resources. But in fact, they played a central role in the social order as vehicles of coordination, ritual, legitimacy for power, and social assistance. The willingness of the Zhou rulers to invest huge resources in bronze ding implies that they played a crucial role in the social technology of the day—if one which was lost over time. The value of Zhou social technology can literally be measured in the weight of the precious bronze alloy, and was at least as important as their weaponry.
Even the period’s monumental construction suggests great skill at coordinating experts. Archaeological remains indicate palace buildings and towers of rammed earth and timber. Zhou-era art depicts two-story buildings, possibly for ritual purposes. The decay of these structures makes it difficult to know whether this era, seen by later periods as a golden age, made even greater accomplishments. When Lao Tzu blithely references a nine-story tower in one of the Tao Te Ching’s meditations, is this fantastical musing, or a reference to a real achievement—or at least an attempt? Written sources from the time point to a sophisticated feudalistic society. Reading them today reminds one of medieval Japan two thousand years later, in ways the imperial and bureaucratic China of later eras—that more obviously influenced Japan as we know it—does not.
When confronted with remarkable achievements from the past, archaeologists have been at a loss as to how to explain them. Sometimes, people will fill the gaps with fantastical theories—hence the beliefs about aliens or telepaths building the Egyptian pyramids. A more likely scenario is that either we have lost the memory of certain material technologies or of social technologies which could compensate for them. Which social technologies allowed China to achieve its feats?
Reverse-Engineering Civilization
Confucius, who died just a few years before the Warring States period, has a popular reputation among Westerners today for the wise sayings attributed to him. But his true project was to discover and restore the practices which had made the Zhou dynasty great. By doing so, he believed a ruler could renew an entire society....
....MUCH MORE
Sadly, all we have on offer here at Climateer Investing is the material. Last touted December 31, 2023 in: The Economist: "When civilisation collapses, will you be ready?"
....If you're into the recreating civilization thing see Open Source Ecology's Global Village Construction Set: Machines: Global Village Construction Set
The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made at a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free.
The GVCS in itself consists of many other Construction Sets – as we build not individual machines, but construction sets of machines. As an example, the Fabrication Construction Set component can be used to build any of the other machines. Our goal is lifetime design, and low maintenance so only a few hours of maintenance per year are required to keep any machine alive.The information provided in GVCS (and Climateer Group) webinars and accompanying material is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered civilizational or societal advice. You should consult with a technologist or other qualified professional to determine what may be best for your individual needs.
We have built the first machine in 2007 – the Compressed Earth Brick Press. Since then, we have been moving forward steadily, improving the performance and production efficiencies of our machines. We have achieved a landmark One Day production time of the Compressed Earth Brick Press in 2012, and we intend to bring down the production time down to 1 day for each of the other machines. In 2013, we used our tractor, brick press, and soil pulverizer to build a comfortable home – the Microhouse. We continue to dogfood our tools in agriculture, construction, and fabrication – as we build our facility up to a world-class research center for open source, libre technology and decentralized production. In 2014, we will be moving to a replicable workshop model of production – integrating immersion education and production – where we intend to scale by distributing our open enterprise models far and wide. Our goal is to demonstrate how these machines contribute to creating a world beyond artificial material scarcity – by creating an open documentation, development, and production platform – towards the open source economy....MUCH MORE
Past success in not a guide for future civilization performance
GVCS (and Climateer Group) do not make any guarantee or other promise as to any results that may be obtained from using our content. No one should make any survival decision without first consulting his or her own survival advisor and/or deity and conducting his or her own research and due diligence. To the maximum extent permitted by law, GVCS (and Climateer Group) disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any deaths or other losses. Your mileage may vary, close cover before striking, not all civilizations thrive, good luck.
